Redditor Builds a Giant, Life-Size Humpback Whale From Scratch

Some poor souls squander the best years of their lives searching for their white whale. Maybe they should get busy sculpting it out of polystyrene foam.

One Utah-based graphic designer—Reddit user squidPUNCHER—spent the past nine months constructing a majestic sea beast from scratch for his local aquarium. Yesterday, he shared a behind-the-scenes look at how he did it with redditors in the DIY community.

If you grew up thinking giant whale replicas get delivered by giant storks, you’re in for an education.

According to National Geographic, humpback whales measure between 48 and 62.5 feet—roughly the size of a school bus.

To match the whale’s mass, squidPUNCHER started with 32 blocks of foam, each one 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 8 feet deep. After gluing the blocks together with polyurethane, he used a grid to divvy the blocks into the whale’s head, body, tail, and fins.

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

With just his brother and a part-time welder as assistants, squidPUNCHER created a metal frame to act as the whale’s skeleton:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

“Overkill?” squidPUNCHER wrote in a comment. “Possibly… but overkill is fine for this.”

With the skeleton in place, the team carved the whale’s contours into the foam, piece by piece:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

SquidPUNCHER then reassembled the sections around the metal frame. In a caption for the following photo, he writes, “This gives you a good idea on the size of this beast”:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

A shot of the whale’s interior, with the foam skin wrapped around the metal skeleton, reveals what squidPUNCHER calls his “bitchin’ whale tunnel”:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

The labor-intensive process led some redditors to question if all that work was worth it:

Luckily for the whale, squidPUNCHER cared less about the effort involved than nailing the details—even minutiae like “tubercles,” those gross warty bumps that decrease drag while humpback whales swim:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

These suspiciously pumpkin-esque barnacles:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

And one pair of enchanting whale eyes:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

After carving off an estimated 330 gallons of foam per day and applying a hard exterior coat and primer, squidPUNCHER caught his white whale:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

But humpback whales aren’t white—so squidPUNCHER still had some painting to do:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

With the whale now complete, the team had to dissemble the leviathan once again, in order to transport it to its final home: the aquarium.

Their truck must’ve been a sight to behold for other drivers on the road that day:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

Ten days of meticulous reassembly later, the mighty whale—weighing in at 4,200 pounds (about 5% of the weight of a real adult humpback)—was hanging proudly in the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium in Draper, Utah:

Reddit user squidPUNCHER

Fortunately, after nine months of hard work, squidPUNCHER’s fin-ished sculpture was very “whale”-received.

He shares in a comment that the founder of the aquarium commissioned him for four additional animal sculptures:

Check out squidPUNCHER’s original DIY thread to view his full gallery of photos, and if you’re passing through Draper, Utah, you can stop by the Living Planet Aquarium for some in-person, land-locked whale watching.